蘑菇AV

Young consumers鈥� creativity and drive are starting to pay off, and banks should act so they can leverage their growth in savings.

The rollout keeps U.S. Bank competitive with other issuers, like Chase, and can help encourage greater travel spend on its cards

Visa is empowering banks with the Visa Tokenized Asset Platform. The platform lets banks issue and manage fiat-backed tokens on blockchain networks. Spanish bank BBVA will pilot token issuance on Ethereum in 2025, advancing blockchain adoption in traditional finance. PayPal USD (PYUSD) brings stablecoins to everyday transactions.

Consumers are already hungry for 鈥渙ne-click鈥� solutions, and Paze automatically integrates with bank partners so that customers don鈥檛 have to manually input their card details. Looking forward, EWS should pull from its Zelle blueprint and expand beyond the owner-bank ecosystem to find growth opportunities.

With twice as many physical locations as major retailers, traditional banks can turn everyday service moments into branded engagement opportunities with digital out-of-home advertising. Santander Brasil is taking steps in this direction.

How we got here: Credit unions and community banks are merging to stay competitive鈥攚ith merger volume growing 3.5 times since 2020, according to The Independent Community Bankers of America. One potential reason for this increase is that customer expectations have shifted in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2023, 92.3% of the 5.2 million accounts opened digitally will be with incumbent banks, as digital-only banks fall victim to economic uncertainty and intense fintech competition.

But any one retailer (or bank for that matter) would be hard-pressed to get buy-in and acceptance from other retailers and banks鈥攚hich means a consortium like EWS or a financial plumber like Fiserv may be the best bet for mainstream retail adoption. Our take: Stablecoins right now are a tool for institutional players and a handful of American consumers.

The bank also sees Discover鈥檚 student credit and secured card segments as key areas to dial in investment. Capital One anticipates onboarding all debit customers onto the Discover network by early 2026. Our take: The scale of Capital One鈥檚 merger is eyewatering.

Preceding the US departure, it sold HSBC Canada to the Royal Bank of Canada. It's also merging its commercial banking and global banking and markets divisions. Banking implications: HSBC is supporting its clients as they transition to 鈥渟uitable alternative providers,鈥� per PYMNTS.

But more directly, banks hold a large volume of US treasuries鈥攁nd 30-year bonds have already jumped 5% since the downgrade, per CNBC. Plus, multiple big banks have already had their credit ratings downgraded by Moody鈥檚, per Barron鈥檚, which could directly affect their borrowing costs.

Canadian grocer Loblaw has found that sales of US-sourced products鈥攄enoted in stores with a 鈥淭鈥濃�攈ave dropped 15% to 20% on average, with some items down nearly 50%, CEO Per Bank said in a July LinkedIn post. Meanwhile, sales of Canadian-made products have risen.